Sam

  A few moments later, Gug was hacking and spitting and desperately rubbing his tongue against the back of his hand.

  "Thpithy!" he whined.

  "It'll pass, Gug," Sam explained, giving his huge arm a pat.

  "No! I'm going to die!"

  Mongrel laughed.

  "You won't die," Sam insisted.

  "Yeth I—" He was cut off by a hiccup that rocked his whole body. He tried to finish his thought, only to hiccup again, and again, and again. He was able to wash some of the heat out of his mouth by gargling from his water flask, but was still left with a bad case of the hiccups as he mulled over who to choose next.

  "You," he said, "Friend Price."

  The mercenary rolled her shoulders uncomfortably and fussed with the sword resting against her, looking as though she regretted joining the game after all. "Fine," she eventually said. "Truth, then."

  "Okay." Gug tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Friend Price, what is your favorite book?"

  "Come on," Mongrel grumbled. "You gotta stop throwing softballs, you big oaf. Give her something difficult."

  "Mongrel," Sam said warningly. "That's the question he chose. Now be quiet and let Price answer."

  Mongrel acted out a silent mimicry of her with an ugly grimace and exaggerated lip movements. She ignored him.

  "Well…" Price said. She cleared her throat. "Ahem. Well, my favorite book would be… Forbidden Hatred. It's sort of a character drama slash social commentary piece. It's pretty complex."

  "Ooh!" Gug explained, and began rooting through the big trunk that acted as his briefcase. "I am also reading that one!" He fished a tattered square hardback out of the trunk and held it up between two fingers. "It is about a man named Bernard who becomes a slave."

  "You don't need to explain the plot," Price said quickly.

  Gug ignored her. "His master, whose name is Richter, is very mean to him and ties him up and whips him and such. But then they fall in love and become boyfriend and boyfriend, and they do a lot of kissing and hugging and inserting of 'engorged meat rods' et cetera, which I believe is a reference to male genitalia."

  "Please—"

  Gug frowned in thought. "Friend Price is right, it is a very complex piece. Even though Bernard and Richter are boyfriend and boyfriend, Richter still does the beating and whipping and all the rest, which is not very nice. But when Richter offers to set Bernard free, Bernard decides against it. He chooses to stay a slave and be whipped all the time. It really makes you think about the nature of love. Some people, I suppose, believe that love and pain are the same thing. Very curious."

  "That's an erotica book?" Sam asked, shocked. "But I tried so hard to find ones without sex!"

  "It's not erotica," Price insisted. "It's just realistic. In any case, I read it for the characters, not for any stupid smut."

  "Characters," Gug agreed, nodding along.

  "It's okay," Sam assured the mercenary, "you can read anything you like. There's no need to feel embarrassed."

  Price threw her a withering glare, but said nothing.

  Eager to move on from that, the mercenary chose Mongrel, who wanted a dare. "Okay," she said, "since our guide seems to enjoy kissing so much, why don't you go give her one? With tongue, if you don't mind."

  Mags laughed as she reclined all the way down on her back, hands folded behind her head. "Now we're getting somewhere! Go on then, sir—let us see if skill comes with age."

  Mongrel eyed her sourly for a moment. "Pass," he said.

  "Really?" Mags asked.

  "Out of the two of you, I didn't expect you to be the one with hangups about this," Sam said.

  "As you may know," Mongrel replied in a haughty voice, "I am a firm believer in not sticking my dick in crazy, and kissing is a slippery slope that may lead to all sorts of unsavory business."

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  Mags sighed, chest heaving. "How dull." She sat up in one fluid motion and put her feet together with a wooden clack of her clogs. "In that case, you will have to take a punishment."

  "Fair enough. What's that going to be, then?"

  "Let's just do a quick and simple one. Here we go."

  Mags held up a finger, and Mongrel shot into the air, limbs dangling as he let out a panicked yelp. Then she twirled her finger around, and Mongrel began to spin violently, cartwheeling out of control. Around and around and around he went; faster and faster and faster he went. He was screaming, while Mags laughed good-naturedly. With a flick of her wrist, he began to spin on the other axis as well, becoming a spherical blur of speeding color.

  "Mags!" Sam shouted, and rose to her feet. "Stop it!"

  The curvaceous woman threw a surprised look Sam's way, as though she couldn't comprehend what might possibly be the matter. The gleeful smile slowly drained from her face. "All right," she said, and curled her finger back into a fist.

  Mongrel came to an abrupt stop in the air, arms flailing, and fell heavily back to his seat. He leaned drunkenly, head bobbing atop his turkey neck, and he promptly bent forward to spew up his dinner. Sam sped over to him and put a hand on his chest to keep him from tipping into his own vomit.

  All the chimps except Number Three were soon at their master's side, snarling and hooting at Mags and slapping the ground in a way that threatened violence with no room for interpretation.

  "Are you all right?" Sam asked.

  Mongrel spat bile, gray hair standing crazy about his head. He gave a slow nod. "I'm fine." He waved the chimps aside, snapped his fingers at them when they wouldn't listen. "Off with you. I'm fine. I don't need protecting."

  Several of the chimps looked like they wanted to go for their weapons, but Number One offered Mongrel a sober nod, and signed at the other chimps until they all reluctantly stalked off. Most likely, the old chimp understood the same thing that most of them did.

  They could not afford a fight with this woman.

  Sam knew that well enough herself—the mysterious Artisan scared her half to death. That didn't mean she was about to stay quiet, though. "That was too far," she said, stepping away from Mongrel when he waved her off, insisting he was fine. "You could have seriously hurt him with that."

  "Oh relax, he was in good hands," Mags replied. "I wasn't going to drop him or anything—I'm not an amateur."

  "It doesn't matter—you still went too far."

  "Relax, kid," Mongrel whispered, grabbing onto a handful of Sam's sleeve. "We don't want to piss her off, or we might end up the same way as that sheriff."

  Sam ignored him, staring down the Artisan. "You need to apologize," she said.

  Mags returned her gaze evenly with a secretive little smirk. A tense silence stretched out. No one spoke. There was hardly a blink between them. Oatmeal looked like he was one sudden movement away from bolting into the woods like a frightened rabbit, while Price was slowly unfurling her limbs, hand drifting toward the hilt of her blade.

  Only Mags looked completely at ease.

  "You've got some fire in you, little Darling," she said with a chuckle, then gave a nod toward Mongrel. "I'm sorry, man. She's right, that was a bit much. I spend a lot of time by my lonesome, so you could say I'm not the most well-socialized person. Didn't mean to hurt you or anything."

  "No harm done," Mongrel replied, and returned her nod.

  Sam breathed a sigh of relief, and the nervous tension slowly bled out of the camp. The game tapered off at that point, though, with no one really in the mood to continue playing.

  While Sam was cleaning the cookware, Mags stretched and rolled off the ground; arms raised, breasts bouncing. "Okay, guys," she said, "I've been sensing something nasty between us and Freetown, so I'm going to scout ahead a bit and see if I can head it off."

  "Will you be back by morning?" Sam asked with a worried frown.

  "Sure I will. This won't take long."

  "What if you're not? How will we get the rest of the way there?"

  "Your concern is touching, little Darling, but I know what I'm doing. Don't you worry, I'll be back to tuck you in and give you a kiss goodnight."

  It wasn't as though they could really stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do, so they all simply watched as their guide disappeared into the night. Sam wasn't sure whether to be concerned or relieved.

  "Should I send one of the boys to tail her?" Mongrel wondered aloud, puffing idly at an after-supper cigarette.

  "I don't think that would be a good idea," Sam replied. "She seems to be pretty observant, and I don't know if she'd be too stoked to find that we're spying on her."

  "Reckon you're right." Mongrel smoked in silence for a minute and stared into the dwindling cook fire. "You think she was telling the truth about that 'scouting ahead' business?"

  Sam still found herself glancing at the gap between two oaks where she had last seen the Artisan. "I don't know."

  "Think she got herself in a twist over that business back there?"

  "I don't know," Sam repeated. "I feel like the more time I spend around that woman, the less I understand her."

  "I get you."

  "She's bad news all around," Price said. "Best we get to this Freetown place and lose her as quick as possible."

  "Yeah," Sam reluctantly agreed. She made it a point to try and see the good in everyone whenever possible, and by all accounts Mags had helped the group a lot already.

  But even so, everything about her just rubbed Sam the wrong way.

  Sam unfurled her bedroll and prepared for bed. Mongrel said that he would take an extended first watch, covering for what was usually the chimps' job. Apparently, they were not too happy about their treatment lately. She couldn't blame them, with the majority of them dying twice in the last week and change, and the fact that they had been forced to sleep rough while they were on the road.

  Even with the day's march and the firelight having faded to a pleasant glow, Sam found that sleep would not take her as she lay curled up on her bedroll, aware of every root and rock under the thin layer of padded cloth.

  Every time she closed her eyes, she saw blood and death; that of those she had failed to save, and that which she had caused by her own hand.

  She wished that Will was there to hold her, that she could listen to one of his silly tangents and forget about everything but his voice and his smell.

  But he wasn't there.

  She slept badly.